Contents
Covers
- Front cover image: Jesus heals on the Sabbath Day (John 5:1-
17) - Back cover image: Dad’s Army
Articles
- Resistance by name by David Boulton
- Compliance and resistance in Latin America by Francis McDonagh
- Don Cupitt at 90 by Stephen Mitchell
- Obituary: The Reverend Hugh Dawes by Jill Sandham
Poetry
- The Traveller by Kathryn Southworth
Reviews
- Edward Nickell reviews Vile Bodies. The Body in Christian Teaching, Faith and Practice by Adrian Thatcher
- Dominic Kirkham reviews The Glass Wall: Lives on the Baltic Frontier by Max Egremont
- Edward Nickell reviews On Voice. Speech, Song, Silence: Human and Divine by Victoria Johnson
Regulars and Occasionals
- Going Green. John Pearson writes about wine
- Letters: Image of God ‘out there’ which still hasn’t gone, from Stephen Mitchell. Climate change, from Digby Hartridge
- A Penn’orth: Penny Mawdsley writes about forgiveness.
Editorial
The title of this issue of Sofia is ‘Resistance’. The front cover shows Jesus resisting the oppressive legalism of the Pharisees and healing a man on the Sabbath Day. The back cover shows the Home Guard in the comedy Dad’s Army, resisting Hitler who was threatening to invade Britain. Our first article is by David Boulton on the Quakers. In the seventeenth century when they were founded, he says, they not only resisted the established church and ‘hat honour’ to one’s betters, but also music, sacred or profane, and indeed all the arts as ‘worldly pleasures’. That position has been somewhat moderated today.
Next Francis McDonagh writes about ‘Compliance and Resistance in Latin America’, where the Church was imposed by colonisation and has quite often sided with oppressive rulers, but also where liberation theology was born. Don Cupitt was born on May 22nd 1934 and in his article ‘Don Cupitt at 90’ Stephen Mitchell looks back over Don’s Cupitt’s course as he ‘came out’ to resist a supernatural God and wrote After God: The Future of Religion.
We have an obituary by his wife for the Reverend Hugh Dawes, one of the founders of the Progressive Christianity Network in Britain (as well as being a SOF member). In her ‘Penn’orth’ Penny Mawdsley writes about forgiveness. And, following his last piece on ’Water’, John Pearson’s ‘Going Green’ is on wine.
Below this Editorial there is a notice about the SOF Network Summer Day Conference in London. The speakers will be two SOF Network stalwarts, Tony Windross and Anthony Freeman, as well as Linda Woodhead, Head of Theology and Religious Studies at Kings College London and one-time student of Don Cupitt. We hope you will be able to come.